The mission against Japan was over, but the aftermath was just beginning for me and would last past the end of the war. I still didn’t know what had happened to all my boys and I intended to find out. The ones who had made it to Chungking were still scattered all over, and I learned that some had been retained in the theater to serve the balance of a combat tour. On May 24, I wrote a memo to Hap: “I feel it would be a good project to bring the rest of the gang home as soon as they can be spared from where they are. Understand they haven’t enough planes so I’d like to have them with me again.”
I also wrote a letter to the next of kin of every man on the raid, telling them as much as I knew about their welfare. To the relatives of those captured, I did the best I could to give some hope for their eventual release. Meanwhile, I kept after the International Red Cross to determine their status, hoping they would be treated humanely as military prisoners of war.
The exact status of the five men in the Soviet Union was still unknown but we did learn that Ski York had been promoted to major and Robert G. “Bob” Emmens to first lieutenant on May 25. They had accepted the promotions via a message from our air attaché in Moscow. The five were being kept together, but were virtual prisoners; however, they were far better off than the eight men captured by the Japanese, as we learned later.
At this time, the Treasury Department received the first of a series of monthly bills from the Soviet embassy, each for 30,000 rubles for the upkeep of the five men. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., became very upset about these bills and personally called me a number of times complaining about them. The Soviets kept and used the airplane; that should have compensated them for lodging and meals for five men for a lot longer than the 14 months they were there.
A few days after the White House ceremony, Hap asked me to take a B-25 on a tour of the war plants to speak to the employees for morale-building purposes. I was happy to do so because these people were making the tools of war. It gave me a special pleasure to tell those who had made our B-25s and its components how grateful we were for their handiwork and dedication. The B-25 was a superior airplane; all they had to do was make more of them.
When I took off in the B-25 for the first flight of my speaking tour, it occurred to me that all three of Paul Leonard’s predictions had come true. I’d been promoted to brigadier general, had received the “big medal” as he called it, and now had another airplane. I had made him a promise on that Chinese hillside that if I ever got another airplane he could be its crew chief. When I returned to Washington, I asked the personnel people to transfer “T/Sgt Paul Leonard to 4th Bomber Wing (8th Air Force) which is being established at Bolling Field, where he will again be responsible for my airplane.” The request was quickly approved.
Hap assigned Lieutenant Max Boyd, a former wire service reporter, to assist me with the paperwork that resulted from the raid and with the handling of public relations matters. I have always insisted that all correspondence be answered as promptly as possible and do so to this day. There were many telegrams and letters of congratulation on hand; some letters included war bonds made out to me; a few had money enclosed. The gestures were appreciated, but the bonds and money were promptly returned with the request that the senders invest in war bonds for themselves or donate to the Air Force Aid Society, which was then being organized.
One of the letters that finally found me after my return was marked “Personal and Secret.” It was dated April 24 and had been written at sea by Admiral Halsey. I value it highly:
Dear Doolittle:
The hats of Task Force Sixteen are on high to you. Superb!
The takeoff was splendid. The conditions were trying for our trained carrier pilots, and for men who had never taken off from a carrier deck before, is little short of marvelous. I wish you would accept and extend my congratulations to your gallant command.
We dodged one patrol vessel at 0310 in the morning, and were busy dodging the second one, when we were picked up by a third. The ocean where we were was studded with them. I hated to dump you off at that distance, but because of discovery there was nothing else to do. I believe we covered this pretty thoroughly at San Francisco.
I stated to my staff that on landing you should have had two stars pinned on each shoulder and the Medal of Honor put around your neck. I am delighted to see that you got at least half the stars.
I am highly honored in having had you, and the very gallant and brave lads with you, serve under my command for a short period of time. It is something I shall always remember. I do not know of any more gallant deed in history than that performed by your squadron, and that it was successful is entirely due to the splendid leadership on your part. It was a pleasure to meet you in San Francisco, and my immediate reaction was that I had met a real man. Events proved me right. You have struck the hardest blow of the war directly at the enemy’s heart. You have made history.
God knows when or where this will reach you, but if and when it does, I would appreciate hearing of your experience. This, of course, at your leisure. Again, my most hearty congratulations. Keep on knocking over those yellow bastards.
Another message that was in the pile was a telegram from Roscoe Turner, whom I had known from our racing days as one of my competitors. A flamboyant showman who always amused me with his attention-getting gimmicks, Roscoe sent a telegram which was typically Roscoe:
CONGRATULATIONS, YOU DOG! WHY DIDN’T YOU TAKE ME WITH YOU? I COULD HAVE BEEN YOUR CO-PILOT. GUESS YOU HAVE SHOWN THE WORLD WE OLD BOYS CAN STILL BE OF SERVICE AS COMBAT PILOTS. I MADE THE STATEMENT MORE THAN A YEAR AGO I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE A GROUP OF 100 B-17S OR SOMETHING SIMILAR, WITH PILOTS FROM THE FIRST WORLD WAR AT THE CONTROLS, AND WE COULD RAISE A LITTLE H—–. HOW ABOUT MAKING ME YOUR AIDE NOW, SINCE YOU ARE A GENERAL? PHONE ME TONIGHT IF POSSIBLE. ROSCOE.
I called Roscoe, and as soon as he recognized my voice, he shouted: “Jimmy! You son of a bitch!” He reminded me that when he had made the statement about a bunch of old men flying combat missions just after Pearl Harbor, I had told him we were too old to fight in the war. Wars were for young men, I had said, not old fogeys like us. He never forgave me after he found out I had led the raid.
By June 27, 1942, a number of my gang had returned to the States, so Hap arranged to have the troops assembled at Bolling Field, in Washington, D.C., for an award ceremony. Hap presented them all with the Distinguished Flying Cross. I later went to Walter Reed Hospital where Lieutenants Harold F. “Doc” Watson, Charles L. “Mac” McClure, and Ted Lawson received their medals. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., represented the President.
With the recent experiences still in my mind, I wrote to all the raiders whose addresses we had asking for the names and background information on the Chinese who helped us escape the Japanese. I told them that Congress had just passed a law that everyone could wear the medal or ribbon of the award that the Chinese had presented us in Chungking and intended all raiders to have.
During this period, I was flattered to learn how much the American people appreciated the raid on Japan and was pleased to hear through our intelligence sources that the Japanese were withdrawing fighter units from their front lines to defend their home islands, as we had hoped. It was also during the two months after the raid that our code breakers learned the Japanese were planning a surprise attack on Midway Island. They feared more air attacks like ours on Japan and wanted to push their front line to Midway. If they could do so, they could then be in position to attack Hawaii again and eventually push our front line back to the mainland.
The Battle of Midway, on June 4–6, 1942, was disastrous for the Japanese. Four of their carriers and a heavy cruiser were sunk, 5 other large ships badly damaged, 322 aircraft destroyed, and 2,500 men killed, including many of their most experienced pilots. Historians now agree that the battle took place because our raid induced the Japanese to extend their forces beyond their capability.
While I was doing my bit making speeches, I made it a point to check out new airplanes I hadn’t flown before, such as the Spitfire, P-51, P-38, and P-47, as well as trainers such as the Piper Cub, AT-7, and AT-9, and the Sikorsky helicopter. I didn’t know what Hap had in mind for me next, but I wanted to be useful. He had made me a general officer and I was anxious to prove he had made the right decision.
Unknown to me, events were happening at the highest level behind closed doors that were to eventually involve me. While we were on the high seas en route to Japan, there had been a conference in London attended by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Harry Hopkins, and General Marshall. The British reluctantly accepted an American plan, code-named Bolero, to build up American forces in the UK in preparation for an invasion of Nazi Europe in 1942 (Operation Sledgehammer) or 1943 (Operation Roundup). In June 1942, Prime Minister Churchill, President Roosevelt, and their respective staffs met in Washington. They abandoned the idea of Sledgehammer and decided on an invasion of French North Africa instead, under the code name of Operation Torch. However, they affirmed the concept of Roundup but not the date.
This agreement filtered down from General Marshall to Hap and their respective staffs. The planners on the staff—men like Laurence S. Kuter, Haywood S. Hansell, Harold L. George, and Kenneth N. Walker—all of whom later became generals, were members of the Air War Plans Division (AWPD) who had previously prepared an unprecedented plan for the war they saw ahead. It had been submitted in August 1941; it outlined a sustained air offensive against Germany, if war should come.
The plan specified four principal air tasks: air operations to defend the Western Hemisphere; an air offensive against Germany and any countries occupied by German forces; supporting air operations for a land invasion and subsequent campaigns on the European continent; and air operations for strategic defense in the Pacific. The plan, labeled “AWPD-1,” was based on doctrine developed at the Air Corps Tactical School during the 1930s by Lieutenant Colonel (later Lieutenant General) Harold L. George and his colleagues. Its main thrust was to blueprint the way for air power to undermine the capacity and the will of our enemies to wage war. They believed that the basic functions of American airpower fell into five categories:
1. Strategic offensive air warfare, principally to disrupt the enemy’s capability and will to wage war, and destroy the enemy air forces if they constituted a threat to our own nation, to our military forces, or to the success of our air offensive.
2. Air support of friendly ground forces in the attainment of their immediate goals.
3. Air support of sea forces.
4. National air defense against enemy air forces threatening our own sources of national power.
5. Air operations against surface invasions threatening our shores.
This basic concept of the employment of aircraft in warfare made sense to me, although I had not attended the Air Corps Tactical School and had never engaged in any extensive discussions with my contemporaries about the principles they expressed and were about to test. Those early thinkers and planners were brilliant. Their thinking at that time was purely theoretical, but was proved out on every point during the course of the war, and the country owes much to their collective foresight and intellect. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, it was going to be the role of fellows like me to turn those principles into action and make them work.
After Britain went to war in 1939, Brigadier General Carl A. “Tooey” Spaatz and George C. Kenney visited England as air observers, and substantive Anglo-American planning was begun. If we were to enter the war, priority target systems would include electric power, transportation, petroleum, and synthetic oil, with neutralization of the German air force a priority intermediate objective.
After we entered the war, there was little doubt among Army Air Force planners that the first priority must be the defeat of Germany and not Japan. As Hap said, “The strength of Japan is relative, the strength of Germany is absolute.” He felt the way to go about defeating Germany was by precision daylight bombing of that country’s internal economic structure.
In early 1942, the Soviet Union applied strong pressure on the Anglo-American leaders to open a second front in western Europe to divert German attention from their hard-pressed forces. The landings in North Africa were scheduled not only to relieve the pressure on the Soviet Union but to attack German field marshal Erwin Rommel, who was sweeping across the western desert of Africa, determined to drive the British out.
Meanwhile, the 8th Air Force was brought into being on January 28, 1942, at Savannah, Georgia. A small group of officers, headed by Brigadier General Asa N. Duncan, began the task of forming what was to become the most formidable war-making air organization in history. In May, Tooey Spaatz, now a major general, and Brigadier General Ira Eaker, his deputy, arrived in England with 39 officers and 384 enlisted men, the first contingent of U.S. Army troops to do so under American command.
During this period, Tooey and Ira discouraged any publicity. In June 1942, Ira was asked to speak at a ball given by the lord mayor of High Wycombe, where the 8th Air Force headquarters was located. His speech is remembered for its brevity: “We won’t do much talking until we’ve done more fighting. We hope that when we leave you’ll be glad we came. Thank you.”
Tooey and Ira worked hard to get some 8th Air Force planes into the air. They finally did on August 17, 1942. A few B-17s struck at a rail target in France. It was a beginning.
Soon after I went back to work on Hap’s staff, he called me into the office one day and said that General MacArthur was in need of an airman to replace General George H. Brett as head of his air effort in the South Pacific. MacArthur was not satisfied with Brett’s performance and wanted an immediate replacement.
Hap said, “I have recommended George Kenney and you. I expect that he will select one of you, and I just wanted you both to know that you have been recommended.”
MacArthur didn’t want me. He chose Major General George C. Kenney, one of the capable old hands who had remained in the service through the rough formative years. It is probable that my public image as a so-called daredevil racing pilot got in the way. I was a reserve officer, and many of the old regulars didn’t believe reservists could handle the big jobs.
George might have had his problems with MacArthur’s autocratic ways, except that he nipped them in the bud in their first meeting. MacArthur reportedly liked to pontificate before his subordinates and when he started to lecture about loyalty, George got mad. He said, “General, I didn’t ask to come out here. You asked for me. I think it’s one of the smartest things you ever did, because I’m the best goddamn air force commander in the world today.” George then told MacArthur that his men would be loyal to MacArthur because “they’re always loyal to me, and through me they’ll be loyal to you. You be loyal to me and my gang and make this thing fifty-fifty, or I’ll be calling you from San Francisco and telling you that I’ve quit.”
MacArthur was taken aback and was silent a moment. He walked over, put his arms around Kenney, and said, “You know, George, you and I are going to get along just fine.” And apparently, they did. I think Hap made a wise decision to approve MacArthur’s request for George rather than me.1
1. This story is told in Makers of the United States Air Force by John L. Frisbee, Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1987.